]]>MetroPCS’s network may be going away, but T-Mobile to is keeping its promise to not only maintain MetroPCS’s brand and service plans, but also expand them to new parts of the country. On Thursday, T-Mobile said Metro is setting up shop in 15 regions where its never offered service before.

Instead of relying on Metro’s CDMA systems, customers in these new markets will ride entirely over T-Mobile’s GSM, HSPA+ and LTE networks. Basically, Metro is becoming a prepaid arm for the newly minted T-Mobile US (though it still offers prepaid under the T-Mobile brand), much like Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile serve as Sprint’s prepaid vehicles.

The expansion doubles Metro’s presence across the U.S. to 30 markets, though several of these new burghs aren’t quite the metropolises like New York and San Francisco Metro tends to focus on. Those cities are: Baltimore, Md.; Birmingham, Ala.; Cleveland-Toledo and Sandusky-Akron, Ohio; Corpus Christi, Houston, San Antonio-Austin and the Rio Grande Valley, Texas; Fresno and San Diego, Calif., Memphis, Tenn.; New Orleans, La.; Seattle-Tacoma, Wash.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Washington, D.C.

But T-Mobile still has some more integration work to do. While Metro will only sell GSM devices in these new cities, it’s still offering CDMA devices to new customers in its original markets, gradually introducing GSM devices into its handset portfolio. T-Mobile is now letting customers bring any T-Mobile-supported device to a Metro plan. Starting Monday, T-Mobile will start selling the LG Optimus F3 through all Metro retail channels, making it the first GSM device available to all MetroPCS customers.

MetroPCS is also getting its first Windows Phone 8 device, the Lumia 521. Like the Optimus, the Lumia is a GSM/HSPA+/LTE device, though it won’t be available in all Metro markets at launch.

“Neville does not let us rest,” T-Mobile VP of engineering services Grant Castle said — I got the impression only half jokingly — in an interview. “It’s not like we were holding back our launch in March. We really started cranking in Q2.”

To put that in perspective, Sprint launched its first LTE network last summer, and so far it’s reached 110 markets, many of which are smaller cities and towns rather than big cities. It took AT&T well over a year to reach 125 markets. T-Mobile’s stated goal is 200 million people covered by the end of the year, but “as you can likely guess we’ll be well ahead of that,” Castle said. That will put it within spitting distance of matching its current 3G HSPA+ footprint, which touches 228 million people.

The most interesting thing about T-Mobile’s rollout is just how multifaceted it is. Ray, Castle and company aren’t just tossing up LTE sites in one city and the moving on to the next one. Once the initial coverage footprint is complete in a market, T-Mobile is starting to reuse spectrum from MetroPCS’s old networks to boost its cell sites’ capacity.

According to Castle, about half of its LTE cities now have networks use 10 MHz of spectrum (the same size as Sprint’s networks), while the other half tap a full 20 MHz (putting them on par with Verizon and AT&T’s systems). But those configurations are constantly changing: 10 MHz networks are growing to 20 MHz (it’s already completed this upgrade in Las Vegas). It’s even started experimenting with its first 40 MHz configurations, which would double speed and capacity of anything currently available in the U.S.

That’s only the half of it. T-Mobile is shutting down large portions of its 2G GSM network and is now filling the spectral gaps with more HSPA+ mobile data. It’s ultimate plan is move the entirety of its HSPA+ service into its old 2G PCS spectrum. The Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) airwaves it has traditionally used for HSPA+ would then become an exclusive LTE band. GigaOM has even learned that T-Mobile is planning LTE upgrades such as using advanced antenna configurations, which would create more resilient and better performing networks.

Having trouble following? Let’s just put it this way: In any given market at any given time, T-Mobile could be shutting old networks down while turning multiple generations of new networks on. Not only is it scaling those new networks outward for coverage, but its scaling them inward for capacity. As Castle pointed out T-Mobile’s networks are now in a constant state of flux. The T-Mobile cell site you see today could be a very different cell site tomorrow.

]]>Exactly two months have passed since T-Mobile and MetroPCS officially merged, becoming the new T-Mobile US. We’ll be hearing a lot more specifics about how T-Mobile performed in its first-ever independent earnings report later this summer, but we thought 61 days out was as good a time as any to take at what the new T-Mobile has accomplished so far.

But since that blockbuster day, T-Mobile has been relatively quiet. It hasn’t launched any new LTE markets, nor has it announced any new activity with its ongoing HSPA+ network overhaul. It started selling the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and HTC One along with the other major carriers, but it hasn’t landed any big device exclusives. There haven’t been any big tweaks to T-Mobile plans or device pricing (except to raise the cost of the iPhone 5).

While T-Mobile may be outwardly quiet, though, an awful lot of activity is going on behind the scenes. T-Mobile has a big media event planned for next week, in which it promises to announce its “boldest moves yet.” I don’t know what exactly T-Mobile plans to reveal, but here’s what we know CEO John Legere and company have been working on:

T-Mobile may not have announced any more LTE markets since its original seven, but we know it’s been hard at work building out new markets. TMoNews has been tallying up LTE sightings in dozens of different markets, from San Francisco to New York. T-Mobile has said it plans to accelerate its rollout, covering a population of 100 million by midyear. Well it’s exactly midyear, so expect T-Mobile to announce a lot of new official LTE markets next week.

MetroPCS may have brought in valuable new spectrum in key markets, but T-Mobile has been opportunistically poaching new airwaves wherever it can find them. Last week it announced a deal with U.S. Cellular to buy a big regional Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) license covering the Mississippi Valley. Those frequencies will add considerable heft to its mobile data networks in key cities like New Orleans, Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis and Nashville.

T-Mobile isn’t just expanding its LTE footprint; it’s also pushing LTE’s technical capabilities. GigaOM has learned that T-Mobile will be among the first operators in the world to implement 4X2 MIMO smart antenna technology, which will increase overall uplink and downlink capacity and help devices maintain better signals when at the edge of a cell. T-Mobile is also weighing its first step toward LTE-Advanced through a technique called carrier aggregation, which could double device speeds in several of its markets. We could get a preview of both these technologies next week.

It’s only been two months, so it’s still far too early to weigh in whether the merger has been a success. But T-Mobile has set a very specific goal for itself when its planned marriage to AT&T fell apart in late 2011, and MetroPCS is a key part of that plan. T-Mobile is trying to position itself as the anti-carrier, or as it calls it, the “Un-carrier,” Whatever the big operators do, T-Mobile will do the opposite.

Consequently T-Mobile has been overhauling every aspect of its business — from its consumer-facing strategy to its underlying network technology. MetroPCS is important to that scheme, not only because it brings the valuable spectrum it needs to compete head-to-head with AT&T and Verizon in mobile data, but also because it already hosts a huge prepaid customer base that has traditional shunned the big carriers.

I reached out to T-Mobile, but it wasn’t willing to talk before its big media event in New York next week (which is understandable). I suspect we’re going to hear a lot more than just network overhaul details at the event next week, ranging from plans to unsubsidized device pricing. We might even see T-Mobile’s first consumer shared data plan (it’s already launched them for business customers).

It’s probably a bit early, but there’s a possibility that Legere might say T-Mobile will stop selling CDMA devices to MetroPCS customers completely. That’s a stretch because it would require a complete integration of T-Mobile and Metro’s backend and provisioning systems. T-Mobile may be aggressive but there are limits.

T-Mobile, however, has already gotten the ball rolling in Boston, Las Vegas and Hartford, Conn, and it plans to put a GSM device in every MetroPCS customer’s hands by the end of 2015 if not sooner. Why not go for broke?

An internal T-Mobile screenshot leaked to TMoNews states that the iOS update will not only authorize the T-Mobile network (T-Mo’s 2G and a portion of its HSPA+ networks are already supported), but will enable Apple’s visual voicemail and MMS features on the carrier as well. Here’s the text of document:

“The T-Mobile Carrier Update is a minor iOS software update that enables official iPhone support by T-Mobile. When installed, the software update enables a handful of capabilities like Visual Voicemail, MMS Settings and Network/Device optimizations that customers do not have access to today. On April 5, the software update will begin being pushed via OTA to all iPhone devices on the T-Mobile network with iOS 6.1.x or higher.”

I asked Apple and was told it isn’t commenting on a rumor, so I suppose we’ll have to wait until Friday to see if an iOS update shows up in iTunes.

Keep in mind that only the North American GSM iPhone 5 model will work on T-Mobile’s LTE systems, which are now live in seven markets, and to connect to T-Mo you must have an unlocked device. All generations of iPhones will work in T-Mobile’s 2G footprint and on its HSPA+ networks in about 50 markets today. The carrier is expanding that HSPA+ support quickly as it undergoes a major network overhaul.

Coupled with the markets T-Mobile has already upgraded, it has a new HSPA+ network running in the PCS 1900 MHz in 37 cities, including many of the country’s largest. T-Mobile isn’t updating its coverage figure for the overhauled network, but these new markets will add considerable numbers to its last count of 100 million people covered.

Update: Interestingly enough, T-Mobile customers won’t be the only ones benefiting from this upgrade. T-Mobile mobile virtual network operator Solavei said it would take advantage of its wholesaler’s reconfigured network to support the iPhone as well. Like T-Mobile it won’t sell the iPhone, but it will sell a micro or nano-SIM that fits into an unlocked iPhone and allows customers to take advantage of its $49 unlimited voice, text and data plans. Other MVNOs like Straight Talk already offer similar iPhone SIM activations, though they work mainly on AT&T’s HSPA network. Now that the reconfiguration is well underway, expect more MVNOs to start offering iPhone support over the T-Mobile network soon.

Here is the full description of the new upgraded markets from T-Mobile’s blog:

New York, including The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island

Newark, N.J., including the surrounding cities of East Orange, Elizabeth, Jersey City, North Bergen, Paterson and Union City

Today’s launch in Chicago; Reno, Nev.; Fresno and Sacramento, Calif.; and the region surrounding Los Angeles (though not in LA itself) – coupled with activations on Monday in Atlanta, Seattle and Minneapolis – bring its total upgraded footprint to 23 markets covering more than 100 million people. While T-Mobile doesn’t sell the device yet, customers with unlocked iPhones can use them on the carrier’s network. But only in areas where the upgrade is complete will they get anything beyond a 2G connection.

Though in the rest of country the network officially hasn’t seen the upgrade – which will move a portion of T-Mo’s HSPA+ network to the 1900 MHz PCS band – customers with unlocked iPhones have reported seeing HSPA+ signals from New York to LA, cities where their Apple devices would normally be restricted to pokey 2G speeds. Right up to its launch this week, Chicago was a hotbed of signal sightings so T-Mobile obviously has many more markets in the works.

]]>Not to brag, but we called it: No T-Mobile iPhone emerged today, despite several speculative reports to the contrary. Instead, T-Mo’s corporate parent Deutsche Telekom made the rather wishy-washy statement on Thursday that T-Mobile would start selling some kind of Apple product next year.

“T-Mobile has entered into an agreement with Apple to bring products to market together next year. Additional details will be made available at a later date,” a T-Mobile spokesman said in a statement.

That lines up exactly with what we’ve been saying for the last year. T-Mobile’s network isn’t yet ready to support the iPhone or iPad yet, but it will be in the near future when T-Mo completes its network overhaul. And once that overhaul is complete, Apple will jump at the chance. T-Mobile may be the smallest nationwide operator in the U.S. but it still has a customer base larger than population of most countries.

The big question is how far along in its overhaul T-Mobile will be before the Apple deigns it iPhone ready. In the next six months T-Mobile will likely complete the reconfiguration of HSPA+ on the 1900 MHz PCS band, which will make its 3G network iPhone compatible nationwide (today only its 2G service works on the iPhone). Or Apple may want to wait for T-Mobile’s LTE network, which the carrier plans to launch in the latter half of 2013. If Apple does wait for LTE, that almost certainly means T-Mobile will have to wait for the next generation of iOS devices, whatever they may be.

Either way, once T-Mobile is done with its network upgrades, all generations of the iPhone and iPad will be optimized for its networks, leaving no obstacle for a long and fruitful Apple-T-Mobile relationship.

]]>A Merrill Lynch analyst is hearing buzz that Apple could make the dreams of millions of T-Mobile customers come true next week by announcing the availability of its iconic smartphone on the nation’s fourth largest – and so far iPhone-less – carrier, Fortune reports. While there’s a possibility we might see some kind Apple-T-Mo announcement on Thursday, we’re probably not going to see an actual T-Mobile iPhone next week or even this year.

T-Mobile’s networks simply aren’t ready yet. The reason T-Mobile has been left off the iPhone bandwagon for so long is that its HSPA networks don’t support the PCS 3G bands the iPhone uses. T-Mobile is fixing that issue, moving its network down the electromagnetic spectrum as part of a nationwide overhaul.

T-Mobile, however, has officially completed that upgrade in only 15 cities. If the iPhone were to go live next week, the vast majority of T-Mobile’s customers who bought it would experience only 2G speeds. That’s to say nothing of the iPhone 5’s LTE capabilities, which T-Mobile won’t support until the second half of 2013. Considering the iPhone is first and foremost a mobile data device, I don’t think even Apple is willing to unleash it on a network that can perform only a fraction of the data functions it was designed for.

Neville Ray, CTO, T-Mobile (c) 2012 Pinar Ozger pinar@pinarozger.com

That said, T-Mobile is aggressively completing its network overhaul, and it has been inviting customers with unlocked iPhones to sign up for SIM-card service. Readers have reported receiving T-Mobile PCS HSPA+ signals all over the country, especially in big metro markets like New York City and Chicago. T-Mo CTO Neville Ray has promised a “material” portion of its footprint will be iPhone-ready by the end of the year.

Make no mistake: the iPhone is bound for T-Mobile. It’s just a question of technology and timing. But unless Ray can somehow complete his nationwide overhaul in the next few weeks, the timing just isn’t right. Logistically that seems impossible, even for network miracle-worker like Ray. In recent weeks, T-Mobile has even tried to distance itself from Apple, claiming the iPhone isn’t necessarily worth the sacrifices.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll hear something from Apple next week about a T-Mobile iPhone, maybe even a commitment to partner with T-Mobile sometime in the future. One of the new iPhone-ready markets T-Mobile announced last week was Apple’s hometown of Cupertino, Calif. You can’t argue with that symbolism. But I wouldn’t hold my breath on getting a magenta iPhone by Christmas.

KC is only the second city T-Mobile has officially announced as upgraded – Las Vegas was the first – but there has been a lot of activity going on behind the scenes since T-Mo started this process in the summer. Website Airportal.de is keeping a tally of HSPA+ sightings in T-Mobile’s PCS frequencies. The submissions are all unverified, but the map shows activity in dozens of cities from Boston to Los Angeles.

T-Mobile isn’t selling the iPhone, of course, but the carrier has always aggressively recruited iPhone owners to its SIM-card plans. T-Mobile claims to have more than 1 million customers on such bring-your-own-iPhone plans. The problem was, until now, it wasn’t able to offer those customers anything beyond 2G data speeds due to the incompatibility of the iPhone’s 3G radios with the T-Mobile network. With the network overhaul, that all changes.

T-Mobile expects to complete the relocation of its HSPA+ network – which T-Mobile refers to as 4G – in its entire 229-market footprint by mid-2013. After that it will build an LTE network in the spectrum HSPA+ vacated. At that point, T-Mobile also hopes to have closed its merger with MetroPCS, which will give its sizable hunks of new 4G bandwidth in key cities like New York and San Francisco. By the time the overhaul is complete in 2014, T-Mobile’s networks will by in synch with those of the other major North American operators, and hopefully that spells the end of T-Mobile’s long incompatibility with Apple devices.

“We are giving a decade worth of pre-warning,” Khurjekar told Fierce. But even 2021 may be too soon. A Verizon Wireless spokesperson clarified with Fierce that that 2021 is the year to which Verizon is committing to keep its 2G and 3G online so its enterprise and M2M customers can make long-term plans. Verizon has set no firm timeline for shuttering its CDMA network at all, and will continue to offer 2G and 3G as long as it customers want it.

Why isn’t Verizon in a hurry to cannibalize its older technologies as well? For one, Verizon is in the best 4G LTE position of all of the Big 4 operators. After scooping up a bunch of 4G licenses from the cable companies, Big Red has the airwaves to launch a new nationwide LTE network parallel to the one its already deployed.

Also, even if Verizon doesn’t shut down 2G and 3G sites for another nine years, there’s nothing stopping it from whittling away at them. Verizon’s CDMA 1X and EV-DO technologies can persist on very little bandwidth, meaning Verizon could keep nationwide 2G and 3G networks with only a handful of megahertz. It could then take the rest of its cellular and PCS spectrum and put it to 4G use.

Verizon will have to keep a modicum of CDMA online for the foreseeable future though. In 10 years our handsets and tablets will have fully completed the jump to 4G, but there will still be CDMA radios embedded in cars, shipping containers, industrial equipment and even vending machines and jukeboxes, all of which will need a network to link to. Verizon will want to keep those lucrative revenues coming.